Friday, August 03, 2007

Yahoo Blogger Fantasy League Draft Results: You knew I was going to take LaDainian Tomlinson with the first overall pick last night. But what happened after that was... iffy. Did I blow my shot at glory, my season over on Draft Day? Click here for the full report (or just scroll down to the next post below).

College Football: Coaches' Top 25 comes out. Yes, this is pretty high up in the usual a.m. post for something so ludicrous, but I can't help myself.

USC is the overwhelming No. 1, but not a unanimous pick. No. 2 LSU got 4 first-place votes. No. 3 Florida got 9 first-place votes (even I wouldn't give them a first-place vote, so I'm not sure what coaches are doing besides using inertia to say "Well, until they lose, they should stay No. 1," which is a stupid way to do any Top 25, let alone a preseason Top 25, which is already one of the most meaningless exercises in sports.) No. 5 Michigan got 2 first-place votes. Texas, No. 4, rounds out the Top 5.

The highest-ranked team that was unranked a year ago is Georgia, at No. 13, followed by UCLA (17), Nebraska (19), FloridaState (21) and Texas A&M (25). The SEC led all leagues with 6 teams in the Top 25. You know? I think it's time to ramp up my college football preview posts starting next week. Too early?

(One more time: What would be the harm in revealing each coach's ballot, from here through the end of the season? Transparency is GOOD, not bad, in this case.)

NFL Deals: The Cards are making Levi Brown the highest-paid offensive lineman in NFL history. But here's the thing: If he comes close to earning that money, it's worth it. That team is a strong O-line from breaking through as a playoff contender.

MLB Milestone Watch: No Bonds 755, No A-Rod 500. Maybe this weekend?

MLB Dud: Brewers manager Ned Yost, who seemed to lose control of his dugout in an perceived altercation with C Johnny Estrada, after Yost ripped another player. It wasn't the fight that some claim, but it's a signal that in addition to losing a grip on first place in the NL Central, Yost might be losing a grip on his team.

MLB Stud: Kerry Wood, who will make his return to the Cubs today as part of the bullpen. At this point, you have to be rooting for one of the great hard-luck cases of the last decade. (Not quite Ankiel, but in the Top 5 certainly.)

NFL Hall of Fame induction: Question for everyone. Would Michael Irvin have made the Hall of Fame if he didn't have the high-profile position of being on ESPN all those years? (Can't wait to hear about THAT induction speech.) Is Bruce Matthews the anti-Irvin?

NBA Schedule: OK, give the NBA a TON of credit for making Oden vs. Durant part of the Christmas Day triple-header, which I argued last month is the biggest single day of the season (playoffs included) for the league.

(Yesterday, I mentioned how awesome it was to have Durant vs. Carmelo on Opening Night. But there's a rival for Best Opening Night Game: KG and the Celtics against the Wizards, in a battle of Big Threes.)

Scandals: Is there a brewing tennis gambling scandal involving Nikolay Davydenko? Or is this just a case of bookies being extra-careful in the wake of the NBA's scandal? Will we see more quick triggers on sports books calling off bets if they see even a hint of weirdness?

Media: So you probably heard about the YES Network being worth, like, 3 BILLION dollars or something like that. Here's a follow-up: The 37 percent of the network owned by The Boss won't be for sale. So hold off on those "Signal he's selling the team!" stories... for now.

How many times have the Arizona Cardinals been astrong something away from a playoff team? I think the answer is a 6 digit number. They used to not have recievers. Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald showed up. Then they needed a running back. Now they have Edge. Then all they needed was a servicable QB. Now they have Leinhart who may be way more than servicable. Now it's an O-Line? Whatever.

Big 3 for the Wizards? Arenas and ummm...who? If you are including Caron Butler as a "big" player Dan you are on crack this morning.

And 3 cheers for Notre Dame not being ranked! It's about time the media stopped sucking off Charlie Weis. That is if they can find that fat tub of lard's chode. Hip hip horaaaaaaay! Hip hip horaaaaaaaay! Hip hip horaaaaaaaaaay!

Transparency in the Coaches (and all) polls would be great. If Steve Spurrier hadn't said anything, we'd never know who voted Duke #25. That's right, Duke, who's on a 20-game losing streak is voted #25 by their 2-time former coach. And the Coaches aren't biased?

They didn't rank Notre Dame this year because they're playing BC, and that'll be an automatic loss for them. Maybe Notre Dame can wear their green jerseys again... haha dumbasses.

Yes, I realize that making a comment about rankings based on the schedule makes no logical sense whatsoever, but BC was 4-0 against Notre Dame when I was at BC, so I'm looking forward to playing them again, and trash talking with NDYanks and others.

Just for fun the Allen/Pierce/KG trio gets 73.8 points. So they are a mere 6.5 points per game better than Arenas/Butler/Jamison and that was as the star players of 3 DIFFERENT TEAMS! I also think it's obvious that the rest of the Wiz's team is deeper as well. I thin kwe forget that the Wiz were in 1st place in the EAST last year but had no chance with the Arenas/Butler injuries right before the playoffs. And they are getting better. Now, I'll go back to hoping they can keep Juan Carlos Navaro.

Reading that ND Clause they do not automatically get in a BCS game with 9 wins, they also have to be in the top 12 of the final BCS standings. If they have nine wins and are ranked 15th they do not go to a BCS bowl.

I have become a casual X-Games fan over the years because of some the the blatantly ludicrous things that these people can do. For those who don't know, last night was the beginning of this years games. They had two events; Big Air and Moto X Best Trick.

Something happend during Big Air that might have been the scariest thing I have ever seen on TV. The guy who already had the best score went for something that had never been attempted before (720 off the 70 foot ramp) and nailed it. The only problem is that he went into the quarterpipe at about 35 MPH. He went up the 30 foot pipe and soared about 20 feet above it before he lost his board in mid-air and fell straight down.

He was down for a long time, and frankly most people, although the announcers won't say so, thought he was dead. In one of the most shocking moments ever, he got up, and walked away on his own power about 15 minutes later.

Here is a youtube clip that shows a shortened version of those 15 minutes.www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBvCrSjpx9I&eurl=

I don't mean to put you down Dan, but that is possibly the WORST fantasy draft result for 1 team I have ever seen. No, seriously. I think I have seen better results from the "auto picker" in ESPN's mock draft room left to pick on straight power rankings.

High risk/high reward only works when you draft guys from whom you could possibly get rewarded. Have fun shopping LT by mid-season to a contender. :-p

I saw that skateboarder's crash on Sportscenter this morning. Wow. I can't believe he got up. He was still banged up and taken to the hospital but unbelievable he wasn't more hurt. Like you said, he basically plunged straight onto a wooden floor about 30-40 feet below. When initially seeing the clip, I figured he would be in critical condition with serious internal injuries.

My son used to love watching the X-games, particuarly the skateboarding.

I heard something on the news this morning but I caught the tail end of it and can't find anything on it this morning. Maybe someone here knows. Did Dodger Stadium have "Steroid Awareness Day" yestersday? If so that is too funny.

The truth is that what he did, was not even close to as dangerous as some random guy (Scott Murray) trying to duplicate Travis Pastrana's double backflip for Moto X Best Trick.

Pastrana tried it once and landed it during last years games. It had only been attemped on dirt that one time before last night but some random guy goes out there to try it. Even Patsrana says that he's happy he did it but isn't sure he will ever try again because there is a good chance that you die. If the bike only goes 1 1/2 or 1/3-4 you are lucky to live.

Sure enough this guy last night crashed but he didn't die. He was taken to the hostpital though.

Apology accepted. What's really weird is that when Arenas and Butler got hurt, Jamison tried to take the Cavs 1-on-5 in the 1st round he did pretty well. He averaged 32 points and 9.8 boards in those 4 games.

Looks like Tennis might have a pretty serious gambling investigation coming in. 5th ranked Nikolay Davydenko apparently retired from a match where there was an unusual amount of betting ($7 million) going on. Probably won't get the attention that the Donaghy scandal will receive, but this could be fairly damning:

This X games event (Big Air) hasn't even been an event that long. Danny Way basically invented the ramps in order to set a Guinness record for longest jump and also most height off a quarter pipe (and later to jump the great wall); and they decided to turn it into an event, Way of course won it every year until this year cause he just had surgery and had to pull out. Still less of a fan of X since they pulled all inline skating out (to concentrate on newer invented events like Rally Car!?) but you can respect all these guys because every year someone pushes the envelope further, I remember for years the myth of a moto-x backflip, now that’s required trick repertoire; its fun every year because someone always wants to go to a new level and its so fun and motivating to see the first time someone does these things, I remember seeing all these for the first time and just being amazed only to later see them as normal repertoire.

skate board: 900moto-x: backflip, body varial, double backflip. Bmx: double back and all the various flairsInline: double back and 1280shame inline was removed before that guy, forgot his name, landed a triple backflip in competition but he was trying on just a halfpipe (before big air was an event, imagine even quad would be possible on the big air ramp)

Ehh on that United Countries of Baseball map, Connecticut is most definetely not all Red Sox territory. In fact pre-2004, it was mostly Yankees territory with a few remote towns in the northeast corner of CT majority Red Sox fans. Now that the Red Sox are relevant again, its probably close to 50/50, with the southern part of the state being Yankee fans and the northern towns being blue collar Red Sox fans. As for me in west-central Connecticut, I'd say probably 60/40 Yankee fans.

kurt, where the hell do you get all these yankees fans from? Around Hartford it's easily 60-40 Red Sox fans, with only Fairfield County shut out of Red Sox Nation. Most of the Yankees fans seem to be either old-line Italian-Americans (Joe DiMaggio's influence) or of Hispanic origin (moving out of NYC itself?) Not to make a sociological argument out of it, but I've always seen more Red Sox fans, although the 2004 title just made it a lot easier not to have to worry about constnat ribbing from the other side (which is what makes up the real inferiority complex - hatred).

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.